In recent weeks, ABC News president Ben Sherwood has been courting political reporters from The New York Times, The Washington Post, and other outlets in an effort to strengthen the network’s D.C. bureau after a string of recent departures, sources familiar with the network’s plans tell POLITICO. This week, the network announced the hire of Times reporters Jeff Zeleny, who will serve as senior Washington correspondent, and Susan Saulny, who will serve as a correspondent.

“We are always on the hunt for excellent reporters, storytellers and news breakers to complement our powerhouse national affairs team,” Sherwood told POLITICO. “Jeff and Susan are fantastic journalists and we are thrilled to have them join ABC News.”

Sherwood’s motivations are clear: He is eager to bolster ABC’s commitment to political coverage, especially after the loss of political director Amy Walter, senior Washington producer Virginia Moseley and chief White House correspondent Jake Tapper — all three of whom left, for various reasons, within the past three months.

But in an era when broadcast news is struggling to remain relevant, Zeleny’s motivations, in particular, are more uncertain. In the current media environment — where breaking news happens online and CNN, MSNBC and Fox News cover politics around the clock — jumping from an influential post at a prominent newspaper to a television network with no cable outlet is no longer the obvious career move.

“The tables turned a long time ago and the majority of all political news is broken either by reporters at online operations or by the cable networks,” one media industry executive told POLITICO. “The traditional networks are playing catchup, if they’re playing at all.”

By joining ABC News, Zeleny will likely reach a larger audience, but he may forfeit his current influence on the national political conversation. Once a familiar presence on the Times front page and website, Fox News and MSNBC, among other spots, Zeleny will now be the exclusive property of ABC News, a network where weekday programming consists of an entertainment-heavy morning show and a 30-minute nightly news broadcast that, for over a year now, has prioritized human interest stories above hard-hitting political coverage.

ABC News’s political coverage has an extraordinary online presence. Through its partnership with Yahoo News, it has the largest digital audience in the U.S. Sources familiar with Sherwood’s plans said ABC News, like all broadcast networks, no longer thinks of itself purely as a television channel and is moving to hire more reporters who can file breaking news stories online.

”The New York Times front page is incredible real estate, and I will keep reading it obsessively every morning. But readers are increasingly finding their news on a wide variety of platforms — and ABC has all of them well covered,” Zeleny wrote in an email to POLITICO. “Remember the old saying, ‘More Americans Get Their News From ABC Than From Any Other Source?’ I always have loved the sound of that.”

Sherwood himself noted that, in addition to their television experience, both Zeleny and Saulny are “fluent on digital platforms and understand the demands of a global 24/7 news operation.”

"Jeff and Susan break news, go very deep into subjects, and have strong relationships with sources and are well known for their teamwork and fine personal qualities,” he told POLITICO.

But despite online traffic, the network’s current share of influence on the national political conversation is relatively low.

Under Sherwood, ABC News has come to be seen as the softer, more tabloid-like broadcast news network. ABC’s competitors often note that the network will dedicate its coverage to human interest stories rather than political or foreign news, despite a strong stable of political and foreign reporters. On Tuesday night, for instance, ABC led its nightly news broadcast with a two-part segment on tourists killed in a balloon crash in Egypt, whereas NBC led with a report on sequestration and CBS led with an interview with House Speaker John Boehner.

This has been a boon to ratings — not a week goes by in which “Good Morning America” and “ABC World News with Diane Sawyer” aren’t touting ratings gains on “Today” and “NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams” — but it means that political stories have often had to take a back seat. The new hiring offensive may signal an effort to change that.

More importantly, ABC News doesn’t have access to a 24-hour cable news channel like MSNBC, which is dedicated almost exclusively to politics. Indeed, one of the reasons Jake Tapper left ABC News for CNN was because the former could not provide him with his own show. By contrast, NBC News White House correspondent Chuck Todd has his own hourlong program on MSNBC that has fast become a favorite among political operatives and political junkies alike. (ABC News has partnered with Univision to create a 24-hour English-language news channel aimed at the Hispanic market, which could change the dynamic.)

Zeleny told POLITICO he has “long been an admirer of ABC News’s political coverage” and was “honored to join [their] ranks,” but sources at both ABC News and the Times said that while Zeleny made the decision to leave, circumstances at the paper may have hastened the move.

The Times recently underwent a round of buyouts, which saw the departure of high-level editors and the reassignment of others. Assistant managing editor Rick Berke was moved off the masthead to lead the Times’s video efforts, and Dick Stevenson, the paper’s political editor, returned to reporting as chief Washington correspondent.

“You don’t lose 30 top people without wondering what is next for this print business,” one Times source told POLITICO, referring to the number of buyouts the Times had hoped to achieve.

In an email to POLITICO late last week, Times executive editor Jill Abramson said she hoped both Zeleny and Saulny would “decide to stay at the Times and be part of our burgeoning digital video journalism.”